ON THIS DAY
August 22, 2019
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE AUGUST 22, 1940
TWo American specialists flew to Mexico City to save the life of Leon Trotsky, 60, after he was attacked with a 7in long pick used in mountain climbing. After re- examining his wounds they held out hope for his recovery, a hope that was not fulfilled. As Trotsky lay dying he is said to have told his wife: ‘I feel that this time it is the end.’ For nearly five years since arriving in Mexico, Trotsky lived under a sentence of death given by Mexican Communists.
AUGUST 22, 1959
DAVID GILMouR, £15-a-week private secretary to singing star Shirley Bassey, was at work as usual last night in her dressing room. Earlier Miss Bassey had saved him from jail for stealing from her and said she would continue to employ him. He was convicted for his part in a raid on Miss Bassey’s Dolphin Square flat. The thieves took £1,000 worth of her jewels and furs. Gilmour was a homosexual who was being blackmailed.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
DuA LIPA, 24. The singersongwriter from London has won two Grammys and in 2018 received more Brit nominations in one year (five) than any solo female artist in the history of the awards. Lipa is from a family of Kosovan Albanian academics and, as a child, took up basketball, believing it would make her taller. She is in the running to sing the theme for the new Bond film, No Time To Die. HoNoR BLACKMAN, 94. The East London-born actress played Cathy Gale in The Avengers and Pussy Galore in Goldfinger. Research found the perfect female voice to be a mixture of Blackman, Mariella Frostrup and Dame Judi Dench. She insists that she is ‘still quite innocent’. When she took the role of a swinger in Coronation Street, she said: ‘I had to ask what a swinger was.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
JoHN LEE HooKER (1917-2001). The American blues singer- songwriter, who had hits with Boogie Chillen’ and Boom Boom, inspired Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton and Van Morrison. one of 11 children, he was the son of a sharecropper and Baptist minister who called blues ‘the devil’s music’ and tried to stop Hooker singing it. LENI RIEFENSTAHL (1902-2003). The German film director, became one of the Nazis’ most famous propagandists and was said to be Hitler’s favourite filmmaker. She spent decades denying she had used Roma slave labourers as extras in a picture (most of them were sent to Auschwitz).
ON AUGUST 22…
IN 1932, the BBC broadcast its first experimental TV programme with television inventor John Logie Baird appearing.
IN 1962, the Beatles recorded their first TV appearance in Liverpool’s Cavern Club for Granada. But its poor recording quality meant it was never shown.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: funambulist (1896) A) A flame-thrower B) A tight-rope walker C) A knife-swallower PHRASE EXPLAINED
Blue around the gills: used to describe someone who looks ill or nauseated. Thought to have originated in Germany.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
I DO not wish [women] to have power over men; but over themselves. Mary Wollstonecraft, English feminist
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT is a witch’s favourite subject in school? Spelling. Guess The Definition answer: B